


who wants to wrap around your dreams

by woahpip



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kes Dameron mention, RebelCaptain Secret Santa 2019, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, technically canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21988597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woahpip/pseuds/woahpip
Summary: Two souls stuck in between, running through memories. Finally, they find each other.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49
Collections: The RebelCaptain Network Secret Santa Exchange





	who wants to wrap around your dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writetheniteaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writetheniteaway/gifts).



> Written for writetheniteaway, for the RebelCaptain Secret Santa! Happy Holidays and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Prompt: Canon-verse hurt/comfort/nightmares  
> (I tried to follow close as I could, but this could loosely be said to "have nightmares")
> 
> title from Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

Jyn knows they were saved, but can’t remember the little details. Somehow an errant pilot found their huddled bodies and risked his own life to save them. Her vision turned black once she managed to haul Cassian and herself onto the ship.

Her heart was beating fast, only getting faster though she lay, shocked. With her vision still faded, her other senses amplified and took over. She could feel fire, getting closer as the pilot tried his damndest to get them away (some how her brain holds space for the shock of him succeeding). Cassian’s hand was around her wrist as they both laid spread in the galley. His grip was there, but grew weaker, barely grazing her after a few moments. Jyn catalogued whatever she heard to stay awake. Cassian’s ragged breathing turning into a harsh wheeze. The pilot’s terse communication with someone at base (she thinks she hears Draven, as close to tears as a man like him could be). Once he cuts the comm off, he sniffs hard like he’s on the verge of tears, and murmurs to himself.

_Fuck Dameron, get it together. Get everyone back before you break down._

The pilot then falls silent. The last sound she hears before passing out is her right leg twitching against the metal floor, boot thumping like heavy clothes in a sonic. It reminded her of when Saw left her; when she realized he wasn’t coming back, her fist pounded the wall over and over, until she decided she needed to live. Needed to get out the bunker.

As she slips under, she thinks of the courage it takes to open a door.

*

As Lah’mu materializes around her, she stays calm. It’s the 26th dream she’s had so far, and they’ve all skirted around bad memories, never replaying them. The dreams have no sense of order. Only the first few followed a timeline, skirting around different stages in her life; after, she seemed to bounce to whatever memory could be pulled up first.

The dreams started small. One was the morning of a huge scuffle in the Partisan bunks, over new blanket distribution. Someone thought to give the young one’s first pick— Jyn knew it was a ploy to get the kids to fight with adults, see who could hold their own. She took one anyway, itching to practice a grounding technique taught that week. The dream showed her waking, eating next to new friends she managed to make without Saw noticing and taking her away to the next barrack. There were details Jyn didn’t remember knowing: the stone texture of the mess hall, wooden splinters jutting out of their tables (tables she helped cobble together, plenty of those splinters going into her fingers). It replayed her day up to the fight, then the edges started dissolving until nothing was left but inky emptiness.

(at first, she thinks it’s sleep, or death. she doesn’t know which she wants most. She hyperventilates when she’s dropped into another dream.)

Jyn takes in her current surroundings, calculating hiding spots and places to run in case this is real and she’s in true danger. It looks the same as when she was eight and lost everything (for the first time). Skies were painted drab gray, pockets of rain pitter-pattering on nearby volcanic rocks. There was grass, muted green. More black rocks created from a long dormant volcano littered the area.

This had been their backyard. Grass grew uneven in rows Jyn helped till. Crushed lumber sat in a pile where their compost bin sat, where she cheered on Papa as he turned it over with a pitchfork, keeping it from rotting. She remembered creating dolls out of straw, lounging on the shale steps leading into the kitchen; remembered sparring lessons with Mama out near the skinny tree line, ones she only recently recognized were direct copies of Saw’s trainings for younglings.

_How much of that did you know Mama? Saw said you were one of his best. But I was better. Would you have been proud of that?_

The dreams hadn’t hurt her yet but she begged in her subconcious. Begged the Force.

_Please no Mama and Papa._

She walked closer to the steps, to the backdoor she knew would slide open, shale spilling into ragged flooring they’d pilfered from an abandoned home closer to town. Jyn hadn’t intended tobe quiet, but her war-honed brain knew to keep a light step.

Knew to listen to her surroundings.

Unusually, she saw the movement before she heard. In the window a ragged sheet she had helped cut and sew for curtains moved like being tugged on accident, shadow rippling only just. Her breath caught. It was barely moving, something she could blame on field mice. But when she looked again, the shadow behind the curtain looked sentient, humanoid. A creature with a hand like hers. She could faintly hear footsteps and stirring (she stayed stuck on the fact they must be making food; this land hadn’t given anything in a while, so it must have been water-reactive ration. She could’ve named so many options if she let her brain run away with the thought).

The dreams never gave her a weapon, so she readied her body for a fight, tendons tight and jaw clenched. One more deep breath in, and then she pressed open the door.

_Fuck!_ The humanoid screamed in another language, an accent she remembered. She took in the human man’s fighting stance, the lack of weapons except for a clay fork in his hand, easily breakable. He wore a cotton top with a Rebel flannel and work pants, exactly how the dreams dress her.

She finally remembered to look at his face. It seems he had already seen hers. Cassian was frozen, mouth dropped in what she knew was surprise, but could have been a scream.

“Jyn?”

“How are you in this dream?”

He dropped his mouth closed and let go of a deep sigh, a large calming breath from the belly. Then he smiled, something she rarely got to see 

(did she ever see a real one, before they died? is this the first one? she maps it in her brain, to remember in whatever world is next)

“You’re in my dream. I can’t lie to myself, my head. You’re what I’ve wanted to see most.”

“You wanted to see me again?” Jyn had ached to see him, since the dreams kept coming. She didn’t dare think she meant the same to him as he did to her. He hadn’t much of a life, but he had more than she did.

(and he gave it up for your cause; for you.)

Cassian abandoned his food experiment and crossed to her. Close, like they had been since they met. One shift of her feet and she’d be against his chest. She wanted this, but was scared; she kept herself rooted.

“When we landed I decided if I had to die, it was a gift for my life to end with you.”

Before she could respond, he spoke again.

“What do you think this means? Me being…here?”

In the end, she decided it’s just a dream. A dream for two people who were saved, but who could die later. Maybe that’s why she’d been swimming in half-formed memories for so long, just watching her life play out before her eyes.

(Something else in her brain reminded her this time, it wasn’t a memory. It was something completely new)

“I think it means in the back of my mind I always wanted you in my space.”

She tried to look cool, keep a neutral face, but Cassian had always been able to see right through her. He stepped even closer. A twitch would have them colliding.

“I’ve been trying to revive an old ration of instabread. If you want to take a look around, I’ll have something to eat.”

“Can you even get hungry in dreams?” 

He laughed, just for a moment or two, but Jyn basked in it. It’s the first that she’s heard. Cassian dropped his head to her shoulder and kept it there, two, three, four breaths.

“I want to think this dream is real. And if it’s real, we could starve.” He turns back to bowl and the dampened wheat that has grown double since their surprise meeting.

“I’ll take a quick look around and run right back.

If this is real, I won’t want to lose anytime. With you.”

Jyn runs the direction of her old childhood bedroom before Cassian replies.

*

The setting of this dream is at least consistent with last time she was home. She returned at 17, the wounds from Saw’s abandonment still fresh. Jyn remembered almost nothing about the visit, except finding her families spaces ransacked, and her nearly constant sobbing. It was the last time she ever cried that hard.

It was the last time she’d ever grieved.

She traced her hands over the torn linens that decorated her childhood bed. They were still soft. Pressure weighed on Jyn’s chest, quite possibly panic.

Why were the dreams doing this, now? Making her remember important things; making her want things.

Fuck walking around. It was a dream, the surroundings shouldn’t matter; she’d been here before, let it go. She returned to Cassian.

“You’ve just…made yourself at home?” Cassian turned to look at her, and she nodded her head over to the tableset he created: a flask of water sat in between two plates of sliced instabread, looking surprisingly edible.

“If we have the time, why not?”

She couldn’t argue with that. They sat and began to eat, still avoiding the bigger questions like _are we dead_ or _do you think you could love me, if you had the chance?_

Small talk is what Jyn decided to stick with.

“How did you know any water in the spigots would be good? I’m pretty sure we had them all running from tanks. They had to be refilled on a regular basis.”

“I hoped the dream wouldn’t give us food poisoning.”

There’s that word again. Hope. She could have some it, and bravery too.

“I hope we’re alive,” Jyn said.

He looked at her now like he did in the elevator. Like it was the end and he needed something to anchor him to the present.

“I think we are.” Cassian rose from his seat and walked slowly to her. Jyn knew he was trying not to startle her, so she made herself sit still, keeping a neutral look. She wondered if her dream would show her biggest wish, her deepest desire. It wasn’t dirty; some would say it was too chaste, not at all what they’d expect from someone like her. 

He paused in front of her. 

“You make me selfish. You make me think about a life after all of this is done. What I can do to be better— what we could do to be better for each other.”

“I make you think all that?” Jyn cocked an eyebrow and gave him a small smile. The feeling in her chest was growing again, this time not panic from her surroundings but excitement of a dream almost fulfilled.

He didn’t give her an answer; just leaned his head in close like he wanted to touch his lips to hers, or to her forehead or cheek. She’d take any of those. He lifts his arm, plants it firm on her shoulder. She sees the moment he decides to kiss her forehead.

(maybe he’ll decide to trail his way down?)

But once his lips touch her, right above the brow, the edges blur. It’s the end of this one.

“Fuck!” Jyn jumps up, wanting to touch his face but not wanting to speed up the ending. Cassian has his hand over his face, breathing like he can’t take in enough air.

“We will find our way back. I’m not leaving you Cassian.”

He nods, calming his breath, smoothing out his features. He makes a promise of his own.

“I’m not leaving you alone. I’m won’t.”

The blank edges are closer now. They keep their eyes on each other until the world turns black.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @woahpip.
> 
> (no beta so any issues are my own-- there's definitely some tense stuff happening)
> 
> (also ok listen to this small aside: I realized after writing that I don't think Jyn and her folks were actual FOOD farmers, I'm not sure of the technicalities of food growing near an ocean. But I wrote it, I ran with it, everyone needs food)


End file.
